like the recovery of a sick man

like going forth into a garden after sickness

death is before me today

like the odor of myrrh

like sitting under the sail in good wind

death is before me today

like the course of a stream

like the return of a man from a war galley to his home

death is before me today

like the home a man longs to see

after years spent as a captive

I don’t know where the dead go, Kevin.
The one far place I know
is inside the heavy radio. If I listen late at night,
there’s that dark, celestial glow,
heaviness of the cave, the hive.

Music. Someone warms his hands at the fire,
breaking off the arms of chairs,
breaking the brute bodies of beds, burning his comfort
surely to keep alive. Soon he can hardly see,
and so, quietly, he listens: then someone lifts him
and it’s some terrible breakfast show.

There are mothers and fathers, Kevin, whom we barely know.
They lift us. Eventually we all shall go
into the dark furniture of the radio.

Raymond Carver – Happiness

So early it’s still almost dark out.
I’m near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.

When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.

They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren’t saying anything, these boys.

I think if they could, they would take
each other’s arm.
It’s early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.

They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.

Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn’t enter into this.

Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.

Siberia sovietica, de Leo Butnaru

Mda… Ce insemna
Siberia sovietica?…Pai
cum ar fi sa va explic mai plastic?…Uite-asa
un atelier de pictor
un taburet – pe el
o pagina din ziarul “Pravda”
patata in draci de vopsele
pe ea – o scrumbie
o stacana cu sticla ca
un curcubeu tulbur – urmele
palmei butucanoase a pictorului – si
bineinteles
o sticla de vodca
intr-o anumita masura
desarta
si o panza ciudata (trebuie sa spunem ca
pictorul e destul de talentat)
intitulata “Papusa beata”
si chiar infatisand o mare papusa
cazuta rasturnata oarecum indecent intr-o
ograda acolo
in Siberia sovietica

Simon&Garfunkel – America

Let us be lovers we’ll marry our fortunes together
I’ve got some real estate here in my bag
So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner’s pies
And we walked off to look for America
Cathy I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh
Michigan seems like a dream to me now
It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw
I’ve gone to look for America
Laughing on the bus playing games with the faces
She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy
I said be careful his bowtie is really a camera
Toss me a cigarette I think there’s one in the raincoat
We smoked the last one an hour ago
So I looked at the scenery she read her magazine
And the moon rose over an open field
Cathy I’m lost I said though I knew she was sleeping
I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They’ve all come to look for America
All come to look for America
America

Someday beneath some hard
Capricious star—
Spreading its light a little
Over far,
We’ll know you for the woman
That you are.

For though one took you, hurled you
Out of space,
With your legs half strangled
In your lace,
You’d lip the world to madness
On your face.

We’d see your body in the grass
With cool pale eyes.
We’d strain to touch those lang’rous
Length of thighs,
And hear your short sharp modern
Babylonic cries.

It wouldn’t go. We’d feel you
Coil in fear
Leaning across the fertile
Fields to leer
As you urged some bitter secret
Through the ear.

We see your arms grow humid
In the heat;
We see your damp chemise lie
Pulsing in the beat
Of the over-hearts left oozing
At your feet.

See you sagging down with bulging
Hair to sip,
The dappled damp from some vague
Under lip,
Your soft saliva, loosed
With orgy, drip.

Once we’d not have called this
Woman you—
When leaning above your mothers
Spleen you drew
Your mouth across her breast as
Trick musicians do.

Plunging grandly out to fall
Upon your face.
Naked—female—baby
In grimace,
With your belly bulging stately
Into space.

Well, book of the day, actually. The book of repulsive women

Still, I did manage to run away this New Year’s Eve. I spent it on the streets of Sibiu with some drunken acquaintainces and a couple of friends that dragged me away from the group and into a kebab place when they noticed I was becoming hypothermic. It was 3 o’clock in the night or the morning and after I warmed up enough for my brain to start working I realised I had found my way away from my home country to a place that truly belonged to the space of my old runaway dreams. This holiday was full of such magic moments. I’d almost forgotten their taste – at home, the real world gets lost in a bog of routine. It would do me good to remember to break out of this every now and then…with a bit of luck, next time I won’t need five days in a strange city to do that. Running away may be just a teenage fancy, but the need for magic is real.

The unicorn is an easy prey: its horn
in the maiden’s lap is an obvious
twist, a tamed figure—like the hawk
that once roamed free, but sits now, fat and hooded,
squawking on the hunter’s wrist. It’s easy
to catch what no longer captures
the mind, long since woven in,
a faded tapestry on a crumbling wall
made by the women who wore keys
at their waists and in their sleep came
hot dreams of wounded knights left bleeding
in their care, who would wake the next morning
groaning from the leftover lance in the groin,
look up into the round blond face beaming down
at them thinking “mine,” and say: “angel.”
Such beasts are easy to catch; their dreams
betray them. But the hard prey is the one
that won’t come bidden.

By these signs you will know it:
when you lift your lure
out of the water, the long plastic line
will be missing its end: the lure and the hook
will be gone, and the line will swing free
in the air, so light it will be without
bait or its cunning
sharp curl of silver. Or when you pull
your net from the stream, it will be eaten
as if by acid, its fine mesh sodden shreds.

Or when you go at dawn to check your traps,
their great metal jaws will be wrenched
open, the teeth blunt with rust
as if they had lain for years in the rain.
Or when the thunderstorm suddenly breaks
in the summer, next morning
the computer’s memory will be blank.

Look then for the blank card, the sprung trap,
the net’s dissolve, the unburdened
line that swings free in the air.
There. By day, go empty-handed to the hunt
and come home the same way
in the dark.